


This Way

by Anonymous



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, Not-sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 16:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16978080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A request is made to Sansa by her cousin Arya. She's hesitant to accept, but by doing so she embarks on a trip that may just change her.





	This Way

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm the anonymous Mexican writer who wrote that awful little tale called Night In. This is a new attempt. It's not quite finished, so I'm taking comments if there are any.
> 
> Disclaimer. I admit I'm not that into the whole Game of Thrones fandom; I read probably the first eighth of the first book (like, three years ago), and I watched with mild attention the TV show, so, if you're going to read this, beware lots of inaccuracies — or, as many as one can make in an AU story.
> 
> Now, obviously this'll be a multichapter thing. I have a sort-of-design for it, but, so far, what's here is all there is of it. I don't know when I'll post the next chapter, so bear with me (and with this story, since it's kind of . . . different).

It was a narrow street. Cars were parked on both sides so that only one lane was available for passing vehicles. One lonely figure walked down said lane, as the pavement was barely wide enough for one person to walk comfortably. The street lamps were already on. Sounds of traffic could be heard from a distant avenue, two blocks away.

Sansa had lived in this street her whole life; had walked down this way to school with her mother when she was seven; had turned right down there to take the underground when she was seventeen. . . .

It wasn't quite at the heart of the city, but it was a good location. The supermarket was near, schools were near, transportation, important avenues; Sansa could understand why her aunt and uncle would want to move here — and, indeed, her present situation made her be pretty glad they'd decided to buy a house just down the street from where she lived.

A cold breeze swept past her, and Sansa tightened her hold on the straps of her backpack, pressing her elbows to her sides.

She squinted slightly as an old white house emerged from behind a tree. It was a very non-descript, two-floor thing, quite simple-looking in Sansa's opinion, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and its wide front door, which was big enough for a car to go through even when it wasn't used for that. No lights could be seen inside.

She rang the doorbell and waited for a few seconds . . .

. . . and a couple more. . . .

The first thing she noticed when the door opened was a pair of eyes that were looking her up and down.

"Hi!" came a cheerful voice.

"He-hello," managed to greet back Sansa.

She had always had a hard time believing how much her cousins looked like one another: both of them had intelligent grey eyes, long faces, shoulder-length dark-brown hair — even their builds were rather similar, slim and athletic, though Jon was much taller.

In front of her stood the youngest one, Arya.

The biggest difference between them was their age. Jon was twenty-three years old; Arya was eighteen, but she didn't look them, what with her tattooed arms and pierced nose and eyebrow. She was probably aware of how young her face made her look, for even her clothes usually seemed to want to say, "I'm older than I look".

Not tonight, however; tonight, Arya was wearing a set of baggy clothes. Sansa assumed they were pyjamas.

"Come on in, then," prompted Arya, stepping aside so Sansa could enter.

The second thing Sansa noticed was how silent the house was.

"Are you alone?" she asked.

"Ya." Arya led the way into the living room.

When she entered, as was usual, Sansa stopped for a moment to contemplate the artsy painting that hung over the electric chimney on the wall. It was the silhouette of a naked woman; her back to Sansa, her faceless head turned over her shoulder, sat so her knees were level with her shoulders; she was painted in the same earthy colour as the background so only her contour defined her shape. Arya's signature was scribbled on the bottom-left corner.

"Is it that bad?"

Sansa blinked questioningly at her cousin.

Arya shrugged. "It's just you always stop to stare at it."

"It just intrigues me is all," said Sansa. It had what she could only call a deceivingly complex simplicity. "What's its name again?"

"Doesn't have one." Arya slumped onto a couch. The TV in the corner was on. "You here to shower?"

"Huh?" Sansa was still staring at the picture. "Oh, yeah," she shrugged as if to show her backpack, which was full of her toiletries and towels. "Still no water."

For the last week or so, the block of flats in which the Starks resided had had some freak plumbing issue. Sansa refused to understand what the problem was, but she sure could understand its implications and how they affected her. The Starks had been left with no water available for basically any day-to-day activity, from washing the dishes to taking proper showers.

This wasn't very troubling, since no one in Sansa's family spent much time at their flat anyway. It was however, significantly annoying with the matter of the showers. Sansa, her parents and her three brothers had had to take showers somewhere other than at their own home.

It had been easy for Robb, the oldest one, who had simply been staying at his girlfriend's flat. The rest of them, however, had been coming here, to the Targaryen Residence, two blocks away from where they lived. Lyanna Targaryen (née Stark) was Sansa's father's younger sister, and she had been nice enough to offer her house to the whole lot of them.

Sansa sat next to her cousin. "I thought your Mum would be here. . . ."

"Am I not enough, dear Sansa?" Arya asked, her eyes glinting cynically. "It's Friday night," she explained.

"How come you're here, then?"

"How come _you're_ here?" There was a playful frown on the top of Arya's elegant visage. "I'm starting to think you'd rather I wasn't here, Sansa."

"Not at all," said she, smiling. "I just had an unfinished conversation with Aunt Lyanna."

"What about? I'm told I look every bit as my mother . . . though perhaps it'd be better if you just showered and left, lest I bore you. I'm a very poor conversationalist."

Sansa laughed.

She often thought of her cousin as an ambiguous sort of person. She could never decide whether she liked her or merely tolerated her. Arya Targaryen consisted of a weird assortment of moods, all right. She had moods that made the two-year gap that existed between them so evident Sansa often thought Arya's Mum couldn't be Aunt Lyanna, who was so nice. Then there were times like this one, where Arya was agreeable and easy to talk to. Sansa liked her cousin best when she had moods like this one, and there had been more of them of late. Sansa believed that was because Arya was finally approaching the end of adolescence.

"Don't you have some urgent appointment?" Arya said suddenly. "Somewhere you gotta be?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Would you like to sit for me?"

Sansa hesitated . . . looked at the painting on the wall again.

"What's with all this formal speech, anyway?" she said, wanting to change the subject.

*******

Needless to say, Sansa was unsuccessful in changing the subject.

She was nonetheless curious as she walked into her cousin's bedroom.

It was square-shaped and high-ceilinged, and it was much simpler than Sansa would've imagined, with only a bed, a desk, and a spindly-legged stool that stood at a corner; a thick dark-blue curtain covered the window Sansa knew to occupy most of one of the walls. Only the collage of drawings and half-finished paintings that covered another wall showed what Arya did with her free time — or, in a way, what she did for a living.

"Are all these for school?" she asked.

Arya chuckled. "What do you think?"

Sansa approached for a closer inspection of the sketches . . . then she blushed slightly and shook her head. "I guess they're not, then."

She spent another minute staring at the wall, her eyebrows climbing steadily higher on her forehead.

"You know," she said finally, "if you weren't my cousin I'd say you just want to see me naked."

Arya, who was now on the bed, chuckled once more. "Relax. I don't need you naked. Half of those were made with them wearing clothes."

Sansa nodded slowly. "I haven't agreed to sit for you yet, have I?" she said as she turned. And when she did, she caught her cousin staring at her . . . staring as though she did want to see her naked.

It was there — and then it was gone. All there was of it was the lower lip that was being bitten below the eyes that gazed at her with nonchalance, like she wouldn't mind it if Sansa suddenly finished the conversation and left.

Must've been my imagination, thought Sansa. "You've got a lot of women here," she commented, hoping Arya hadn't noticed her momentary slip of the mind.

Arya stood up and approached, her eyes now on the wall that held her unfinished projects. "Ya," she said simply.

Sansa wondered, as she stared at her cousin's contemplative gaze, what was it that she saw.

Sansa had never seen any form of artistic potential in herself. She lacked some necessary interest in it, she supposed. But Arya . . . Arya had developed it out of nowhere. They had grown up together, and their families had been as close during their childhoods as they were now, so she could say with confidence that she had never seen any form of artistic potential in her cousin as they grew up either.

Now, though, Sansa couldn't deny what stared her in the face. Those subtle strokes of a brush, the soft lines of ink . . . the images her cousin created. . . . There were crossed legs, and flexed fingers; hands and arms intertwined; necks that became shoulders and shoulders that became chests and backs. She had talent.

There was, however, a homogeneity in the images that Sansa found slightly disturbing, particularly considering why she had come up here.

"I know what you're thinking," Arya said after a while, pensively. "It's just . . . there's something about the female form. It fascinates me. I just love drawing it."

"Well, you're good at it," said Sansa sincerely. All those naked bodies (and there were a lot of them) were very well-drawn. They made her feel the things she often felt but tried not to notice. Like the times she went to swim at Margaery's pool and saw her come out with her daring swimsuits. "How come they aren't finished?"

"Some of them are." She vaguely pointed them out. "It's never very exciting to finish them, though. Only makes me wanna do more."

"So you make them last?" Sansa asked amusedly.

Arya just grinned. She was still pensive.

"Arya." Something had just occurred to her. "Are all these women . . . are they people I know?"

"Perhaps," shrugged she. "Mostly my friends — the ones you've met at our family meetings, yeah," she explained before Sansa could ask. "Not like it's a bad thing, is it?" she asked after realising Sansa was blushing. "They're not precisely explicit."

They certainly weren't, Sansa had to give her that. For, indeed, while there were lots of torsos and extremities, Sansa could see no bosoms or crotches. Not even faces, for that matter.

"You wanna do it, then?" asked Arya suddenly. "Sit for me?"

Sansa hesitated again. She looked at the pictures and felt a strange thrill crawling up her back. She thought of the fascination her cousin felt for the female body, remembered the way she'd looked at her before; and she was suddenly conscious of the stare that she could feel on her, of the look Arya was giving her and that Sansa could see out of the corner of her eye. She thought of how she herself looked at girls from time to time, of how she'd become more than accustomed to it.

  *******

Sansa heard Arya walking down the stairs just as she closed the door behind her.

After they had agreed on a date to do the sitting, Sansa excused herself. She still had to shower.

She turned and found herself in a long bathroom; a sink was close to her right, the toilet was halfway through the room, and the shower was at the far end. From where she stood she had a clear view into the shower, because all that separated it from the rest of the room was transparent glass.

She set down her backpack and started to extract its contents. It was as she bent down to pick up a towel she'd accidentally dropped that she caught sight of her reflection on the full-length mirror next to the shower.

Her clothes were almost as baggy as Arya's pyjamas. She could barely distinguish the outline of her body through them. It was a nice body, she thought, not all that special either, but it sure was nice. Margaery always told her it was nice. . . .

She thought of Margaery, of Marge, as she got undressed, still looking at her reflection. Her breasts were rather heavy, she supposed, and full; Marge's were smaller, and perky. Very nice, Sansa thought as she pictured them.

She blushed.

She had long legs. Really long legs. Back when she was growing up, she remembered, they used to bother her, because there weren't many tall girls. Even now, she didn't know many girls as tall as her. That used to make her feel self-conscious. The good part about being tall, she soon had discovered, was that she was also well-proportioned. Her torso went well with her legs, with her modest hips and slight waist. Her thighs were nice and muscly from running, as were her calves.

Overall, Sansa liked her body. It looked good naked. She liked her shoulders, which had become rather wide during her early teens when she used to take swimming lessons. Liked the barely-coloured hair that covered her forearms and the sparse, barely-noticeable freckles that decorated her upper chest.

She liked her face, with its high cheekbones and its sharp expressive brow; liked her blue eyes and her nicely-shaped nose . . . her pouty lips, which she now remembered were Margaery's favourite part. . . .

Sansa ran a hand through her auburn hair as she moved into the shower; shivered slightly when the first few drops of cold water fell at her feet, splashing her ankles. With her eyes closed, she walked into the water once it was warm. She took a moment to enjoy the heat, the pounding of the water on her head, the sensation of it pooling momentarily at her feet before going down the drain.

The feeling of Arya's eyes inspecting her came back to her, and her eyes opened. There already was a thick fog formed around her. The bathroom was blurry beyond the glass. Arya's face floated in front of Sansa — next to her, in the shower.

 _Why me, though?_ Sansa had asked curiously.

Arya had smiled, done the half-shrug Sansa was starting to realise was quite frequent on her. _You're a girl_ , she'd said, _you're pretty . . . I'm sure you look nice naked. That's really all I need to want to paint any one._

Sansa had felt herself blush in that way that Marge always said was unintentionally flirty, almost sultry. The same kind of blush spread on her cheeks now, as she started washing her body. Arya's comment had been dropped nonchalantly, as though it were more a fact than it was a compliment.

 _If I wasn't pretty, then_ , Sansa had replied playfully, _you wouldn't have asked me at all?_

Grey eyes had settled again on the wall. _Girls are all pretty, Sansa_ , had said Arya.

Done showering, Sansa started drying herself, her mind swarming with thoughts and memories — most thoughts surrounding one particular memory: Arya staring at her. Sansa didn't know how to feel about that. It was flattering that her cousin wanted her as a model, but the way she talked about her works, about the "female form" . . . it made Sansa remember what she had been through at around Arya's age. How she'd felt towards Marge, her best friend; what she'd ended up doing . . .

Could Arya be going through something similar, Sansa wondered, could it be that she was as uncertain now as Sansa had been back then? She had to admit, though, that if such was the case, Arya's situation was very different. Sansa had only had Margaery, and Margaery had been the only reason for it all. Arya, with all those sketches, all those models posing, sitting for her . . .

And now she, Sansa, was going to become one of them.

She shook her head at her own thoughts, suddenly realising she was being ridiculous. It was her tendency to see things as more than what they were, as usual. Her cousin was an artist and she loved making beautiful things, and she thought the female body was a beautiful thing — and, for what it's worth, Sansa agreed with her wholeheartedly.

It was flattering that her cousin wanted her as a model, and that should be all Sansa thought of it.

She started to get dressed, wondering how she'd look as a painting, as a naked, half-finished drawing, stripped of her clothes and her shame and perhaps even her colours.

She didn't bother checking her reflection again. She just packed up her things, making a mental note to hang her wet towels as soon as she got home, before making her way out . . . but she stopped at the door.

It was open. A crack allowed the light from the bathroom to land on the dark wall of the hallway outside.

Frowning, Sansa walked through it. Trying hard to remember whether she'd closed it in the first place, she made her way downstairs and to where Arya was sitting, toying with a pen and a notebook which she held at her lap.

Arya looked up when Sansa approached, grinned, and extended her arm so Sansa could see the drawing.

"It's you," she said.

It was a cartoonish version of Sansa, complete with giant head and hands and a pair of eyes so big her mouth occupied only the smallest portion of her face.

Sansa laughed. "Don't I have a nose?" for the drawing lacked one.

Arya beheld her work. "Yeah," she agreed ruefully. "I also failed to give it your womanly shape."

"Making cartoons of your family," Sansa said. "Rich way of spending your Friday night, Arya."

"I know," said she cynically, flicking her pen here and there on the paper, making small changes to her little doodle.

"Hey." Sansa had just remembered. "Is there something wrong with the bathroom door? I know I closed it when I got in, but it was open when I finished."

Without looking up, Arya waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, yes. Dad was supposed to fix that."

Sansa had the distinct impression that her cousin avoided looking at her, but she concluded it must've been simply her overthinking mind going at it again.

She chatted with her cousin for another short while before finally leaving.


End file.
